North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

I guess most barra obessives like myself have been in a situation when you've been peppering the strike zones with all sorts of rubber and plastic with no hits. But the barra are boofing in the vegetation on tiny bait fish and are nearly always too hard to get the lure past them. It's a bit tricky to cast micro rubbers with a normal baitcaster, so I recently purchased a Shimano Sedona spin reel with a 6" something raider rod on 14 pound braid.
The first test cast in my street sent the tiny Storm platic into orbit, I couldn't belive the casting distance man, it was awsome. I was up the Adelaide today and low and behold the smallish barra were kapoow kapoow in the weeds. I rigged a 1 inch black and gold squidgy in the weedless fashion, on the first cast I bouced into the bush and BAM! 45cm swamp rat lip was hooked and worked back to the boat.
Nothing to get a barra horn over but it livened up the afternoon. I think I'll let my guests use it when the going it a bit slow. At least it can turn a no barra day for someone into a bit a fun. I look forward to the carnage when a stonking fish takes it.

FYI. I landed a 96cm barra on a mullet popper further down the creek. A school of mullet when wizzing past the boat. A quick cast in behind them confirmed a stonker was chasing them and BAM, action stations!!

Hi Barrbeast,

I bought a lightweight spin outfit similar to yours 2 years ago. I broke in the outfit at the mouth of Rapid Creek, using small squidgies to catch rat barra. Its great fun, especilly when you know that all else wlll fail, and there is the possibility of a jack or larger barra. The barra loved those small pearl squidgies, they would inhale the lure right down.
I can't wait to get into the barra with the soft plastics in two weeks when I do my runoff Daly trip.
Cheers
Dan

Caught any more stonkers lately BarraBeast?

Prober, The tally this year so far has been pretty good with a normal baitcaster - 102cm at Sampan mouth last week followed by a 75. The 102 was a stonking fat, pure, crome jobber with a yellow tail
Landed a 96 at beartice on a popper and an 80 on monday night a bald hill creek. The 80 went right off and had really dark purple eyes which was interesting. I've been surprised with the rubbers this year as the hooks have been holding. For 2 runoffs in a row I was loosing fish all the bl..dy time using one hooked rubbers.

As for the finesse rod, caught loads of rats and a couple to 60cm at the March Creek(Shady) barrage last week. Every cast was a fish and we quickly ran out of rubbers to throw at them. I?m really happy with the whole eggbeater light rod experience although I lost a rod out of the boat while driving down the highway last week.

hows your runoff going?

What time do you fish Beatrice with Poppers? Just on dusk, I have fished Beatrice a lot lately but never really done too well there, have landed a few smaller barra casting the edges just inside the mouth and some larger fish on the troll, but never tried surface lures there.

Cheers Brent

snag prober wrote:Prober, The tally this year so far has been pretty good with a normal baitcaster - 102cm at Sampan mouth last week followed by a 75. The 102 was a stonking fat, pure, crome jobber with a yellow tail
Landed a 96 at beartice on a popper and an 80 on monday night a bald hill creek. The 80 went right off and had really dark purple eyes which was interesting. I've been surprised with the rubbers this year as the hooks have been holding. For 2 runoffs in a row I was loosing fish all the bl..dy time using one hooked rubbers.

As for the finesse rod, caught loads of rats and a couple to 60cm at the March Creek(Shady) barrage last week. Every cast was a fish and we quickly ran out of rubbers to throw at them. I?m really happy with the whole eggbeater light rod experience although I lost a rod out of the boat while driving down the highway last week.

hows your runoff going?

Funny you mention that. I've been having a lot of trouble lately with not hooking up properly. Lost a lot of fish. Used the single hook softies and lost heaps of fish, switched to the ones with the treble underneath and lost heaps of lures. Sometimes you just cant win. Going to experiment with a stinger hook trailing behind and see how that goes for a while.